In the early days of network computing, users relied on analog dial-up modems to establish a communication session with a remote resource via the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The analog dial-up modems were operable to establish the communication session in much the same manner as other telephone equipment (such as fax machines and the like) established a communication session with a destination device. Dial-up modems were operable to establish an unreliable and bandwidth-limited connection. As time progressed, service providers started offering services (such as voice-over-IP communication, video-over-IP, network gaming, music and video downloading services and the like) that required a more reliable connection and were much more bandwidth-intensive. Several high speed access solutions are currently present on the market, one of them being xDSL-based access (which includes Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), Very High Bit-rate DSL (VDSL), Symmetric DSL (SDSL), Rate-adaptive DSL (RADSL) and the like).
One of the advantages of many of the xDSL technologies (including ADSL) is that they can carry lower frequency voice signals and higher frequency data signals over the same telephone line. The voice signals, referred to herein as Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) signals, are typically transmitted over a frequency band from approximately 100 Hz to about 4 kHz. Accordingly, traditional POTS equipment at the customer premises (such as POTS phones, answering machines, fax machines, analog modems and the like) can be used to transmit and receive POTS signals. At the same time, the data signals (or “DSL data signals” as they are referred to herein below) are typically transmitted at higher frequencies. For example, the ADSL data signals are transmitted upstream over a frequency band from about 32 kHz to about 134 kHz, and received downstream over a frequency band from about 203 KHz to about 1.2 MHz.
The xDSL technologies are prone to some known problems, such as distance limitations. Moreover, due to the fact that the xDSL technologies utilize lower frequency bands for POTS signals and higher frequency bands for DSL data signals, the composite full spectrum signal has to be separated at some point in the telephone line both in a service provider's central office and a customer premises. Otherwise, the high frequency signals will cause a humming noise to be present when a regular telephone conversation occurs. Generally speaking, in the customer premises, the requirement for separating the composite full spectrum signal into the voice-band signal and the DSL-band data signal has been addressed by use of a POTS microfilter or a POTS splitter. The POTS microfilter, which is sometimes also referred to as a distributed filter, a line filter or a phone line filter, is fitted to every POTS termination point (usually mounted between the wall RJ-11 jack and a plug leading to the POTS termination point). The POTS microfilter is operable to pass a lower-frequency signal and to block all signals above a certain frequency (a typical POTS microfilter blocks all signals over 40 kHZ). Even though the use of POTS microfilters has proven to be successful for in-home systems providing access to standard sources of data (such as, for example, the Internet), bandwidth losses of approximately 2 to 3 Mbits/sec attributable to POTS microfilters and the in-home telephone network have proven to negatively affect performance of in-home systems providing access to sources of data requiring higher bandwidth (such as, for example, a source of video-over-IP data).
The POTS splitter, on the other hand, is typically fitted at a demarcation point where it diverges data and voice lines and, therefore, separates POTS signals from DSL-band data signals. The POTS splitters are typically installed by the service provider and allow for the installation of a so-called “home run” (i.e. a dedicated point-to-pint) cable to “light up” a particular jack in the subscriber premises with the full spectrum signal, containing the DSL data signals, while “lighting up” all other jacks of the subscriber premises with filtered, POTS signals only. Even though use of POTS splitters has mitigated some problems associated with the use of POTS microfilters (such as, for example, reducing bandwidth losses), the POTS splitter approach suffers from certain problems as well. For example, if a subscriber moves or is otherwise no longer desirous of using the POTS splitter, the service provider has to dispatch a technician to uninstall the POTS splitter. This results in an unnecessary cost being incurred by the service provider, which in most cases has to be absorbed by the service provider. In today's competitive environment prevalent in the telecommunications sector, service providers are on a constant look-out to decrease operating costs and, specifically, to decrease costs associated with “truck rolls”, i.e. costs associated with dispatching technicians to customer premises.